In a consumer culture like ours it has become a financial necessity for the retailers to be the “advent” of Christmas. In shopping centres everywhere the Christmas carols we love to sing appear along with the Christmas trees, decorations and the incessant advertising. Well-intentioned attempts to revive the “meaning for the season” fall largely on deaf ears. For many Australians, Christmas has rightly returned to its secular origins – celebrated in 2015 for the first time with no restrictions to trading on Boxing Day!
Curiously – hopefully – there will be one more crowd in our city this Christmas. Carols in the Domain remains as popular as ever and will attract a large crowd. If Advent has become a season for shopping it also endures as a season for singing. Forget for a minute “Jingle Bells” or “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”. Most of the Christmas carols prepare us to celebrate Christ’s birth. Singing of this kind has profoundly spiritual and theological roots.
The Advent readings recognise this significance and offer us a series of songs to prepare for Christmas. Over the weeks of Advent (and at 11pm on Christmas Eve) we have five guest preachers – all gifted women – who will tune us into the hope and expectation, the waiting and longing, the pausing and reflecting of Advent.
Sunday 29 November – A Song of Promise (Advent I) with Caroline Andrews
Sunday 6 December – A Song for the Dawn (Advent II) with Joanne Hayes
Sunday 13 December – A Love Song (Advent III) with Nerida Peart
Sunday 20 December – An Ordinary Song (Advent IV) with Di Morgan
Thursday 24 December, 11pm – A Song of Revolution (Christmas Eve) with Tanya Riches
Geoff Broughton, Rector